Marlena Kudlicka, Ignacio Uriarte, Diogo Pimentão | 3/1/1

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Marlena Kudlicka, Ignacio Uriarte, Diogo Pimentão | 3/1/1
Exhibition: Sep 10 – Oct 22, 2016
Opening: Friday, 9 Sep 2016, from 6 to 9 pm
ŻAK | BRANICKA is delighted to present the group exhibition 3/1/1, a collaborative project
between the artists Marlena Kudlicka, Ignacio Uriarte and Diogo Pimentão.
In our contemporary world there are no pure, unprocessed materials outside the frame of culture, outside
of language, outside of forms and signs. In our contemporary world materials are objects — carriers of
culturally and ideologically pre-given meanings and scenarios. In their joint exhibition, Marlena Kudlicka,
Ignacio Uriarte and Diogo Pimentão manifest this awareness with regard to paper as a processed
material, a shape, a measurement unit, a building block, a tool, and an image. Entitled 3/1/1, the
exhibition suggests a variety of perspectives and interpretations to what we can associate with paper, and
consequently with drawing, and therefore with representation.
For Kudlicka, Uriarte and Pimentão, a sheet of paper is not just a thin surface made of cellulose pulp
derived from wood, nor it is a neutral, transparent, invisible support or substrate. For them, it is a historical
set of textures, formats, and ratios which conduct a wide range of activities and behaviors. For Kudlicka,
Uriarte and Pimentão, a drawing is not just an unsubstantial, preliminary sketch depicting the outline of an
object, nor it is an inferior category of painting; it is an action — an operation in real, architectural, threedimensional space.
3/1/1’s initial point of departure is the international standard of paper sizes, i.e., the formats of the A
series. Though perceived by many as an auto-generative, even transcendental height-to-width ratio, the
international paper size system is an outcome of a particular historical constellation taking us back to
Germany 1922, when the German Institute for Standardization published DIN 476, the standard that
introduced the A series paper sizes, which was only adopted in 1975 as the international standard ISO
216. For Kudlicka, Uriarte and Pimentão, 3/1/1 begins with the historicization and relativization of the
standard of the A series, up to a point where, rather than universal and timeless, it is received as a
contingent result of contingent conditions.
f=different 3/1/1 (2016), Marlena Kudlicka’s sculpture for 3/1/1, stems from the image of an industrial
paper cutter. Skeletal, linear, and to some extent graphic, the function-like, geometric sculpture, made of
powder coated steel and glass, spatially outlines a height-width ratio that thematizes the notion of paper
in terms of typology of formats. f=different 3/1/1 is a sculptural, self-referential drawing in space dealing
with the preconditions of drawing as such.
The wall installations of Ignacio Uriarte take the exhibition’s exploration of paper and drawing to a
different direction. Practicing drawing not as a procedure executed on paper but as an action of and with
the paper itself, or more specifically, of and with the A series paper sizes, Uriarte’s wall installations
consist of repetitive arrangements of identical groups of papers utilizing the A series ratio and the ISO
paper size system as a sculptural material, while blurring the difference between the two-dimensional and
Lindenstr. 35 | D-10969 Berlin | + 49 30 61107375 | [email protected] | www.zak-branicka.com
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the three-dimensional, between flatness and spatiality.
Diogo Pimentão’s contributions to 3/1/1 articulate the exhibition’s ‘expanded field of drawing’ from an
additional angle. ‘Soaked’ in graphite, his works can be described as paper sculptures (or sculptural
papers) whose meaning and shape change and are constantly redefined in accordance to the viewer’s
point of view (as seen, for example, in Walk (2015)), and to the actual site in which they are displayed (as
seen, for example, in Sudden (Shape) (2015)).
The structural logic which 3/1/1 is based upon resonates a sort of an endless relay race. The exhibition is
like one big track divided into three sections. As indicated in the exhibition’s poster, each of the three
artists covers one section and the edges of each section overlap the others: Kudlicka’s Sculpture and
Language stretches into Uriarte’s Language and Drawing, which stretches into Pimentão’s Drawing and
Sculpture, which then stretches into Kudlicka’s Sculpture and Language, and so forth.
On the structural level, the exhibition predetermines the diffusion of each section of works into the others.
While maintaining the distinction between the individual artistic contributions of its three artists, 3/1/1
seeks to delicately undermine the position of the artist as a singular, sovereign author.
Kudlicka’s, Uriarte’s and Pimentão’s experiments with paper and drawing situate their work in affinity to
Donald Judd’s 1965 characterization of Minimalist works as “Neither Painting Nor Sculpture”, as well as to
Conceptual Art’s “Aesthetic of Administration”. In addition to its interest in impersonalized standards of
paper sizes, and its diffusive structure, these references further emphasize 3/1/1’s link to the politics of
authorship, but at the same time they enable us to observe the ways in which the exhibition disobeys the
canonical imperatives of Minimalist and Conceptual art, and to face its subtle, yet inexhaustible
movement between materials and processes, between emptiness and fullness, negation and assertion,
passivity and activity.
Text by Ory Dessau (2016)
Marlena Kudlicka (b.1973 in Poland) lives and works in Berlin. Her works have been exhibited in international
institutions such as the MWM in Wroclaw (2016), the Skulpturenmuseum Glaskasten in Marl (2016), the
Kunstmuseum Bochum (2016), the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb (2016), the Zacheta National Gallery in
Warsaw (2015), the Museum of Modern Art Lodz (2014) or the CGAC in Santiago de Compostela (2012). She also
had residencies at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, the Schloss Solitude Akademie in Stuttgart and the
International Residency Program Location One in New York, among others. Her first artist book is going to be
published in September 2016.
Ignacio Uriarte (b.1972 in Germany) lives and works in Berlin. His work has been exhibited at the Kunstmuseum
Bonn (2016), the Kunstmuseum Bergisch Gladbach (2015), the Kunsthaus Dresden (2013), the Drawing Center in
New York (2013), the Museum of Contemporary Art in Istanbul (2011), the CGAC in Santiago de Compostela (2011),
the Nationalmuseum in Berlin (2011) and the Kunstverein Arnsberg (2010), among others. His works were acquired
by public institutions such as the collection of the Berlinische Galerie in Berlin, the Städtische Galerie im
Lenbachhaus in Munich or the Museum Ludwig in Cologne.
Diogo Pimentão (b.1973 in Lisbon) lives and works in London. His work was shown at the Museu Grão Vasco in
Viseu, Portugal (2016), the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Paris (2015), the Museu de Arte Contemporânea - Colecção
António Cachola in Elvas, Portugal (2015), the IMMA (Irish Museum of Modern Art) in Dublin (2015), the MAMAC in
Nice (2012) and the Centre d’Art Contemporain de la Ferme du Buisson in Noisiel, France (2011), among others. His
works are represented in the collections of institutions such as the Collection Lambert in Avignon, the Centre
Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Pomeranz Collection in Vienna, the Portugal Telecom Foundation in Lisbon or the
Fonds National d’art contemporain in Paris.
Lindenstr. 35 | D-10969 Berlin | + 49 30 61107375 | [email protected] | www.zak-branicka.com